A new version of the ASL (Ada Structured Library) has been put on to
my web page - http://www.concentric.net/~Minyard. The changes are
numerous, see the changelog below.
The ASL containers are a set of container classes for Ada95. See the
web page for more details. A few library functions are now available.
Major changes in this release are:
* Added semaphore types
* Storage management added for all the containers.
* A memory leak detection storage pool was added.
* A major rework of the test programs.
* A krunched (short filename) version is available for DOS users
A list of all changes is in a changelog at the end of the email.
I'll probably make the next release of the containers 1.0. I plan to
add Btrees and update the user documentation to something better than
a text file.
What Is the ASL?
----------------
Containers
----------
The container classes consist of the main container types:
Vector - A variable-sized array
AList - A list based upon an array. This is good for stacks
and queues that don't require insertions in the middle.
DList - A doubly linked list, also good for stacks and queues.
This one is good at insertions in the middle.
Tree - An ordered binary tree, balance or unbalanced.
List - A singly linked list, good for traversing in order, but
you can't go backwards.
Hash - A hash table. Good for fast lookups, sets, and bags.
Heap - An ordered heap. Good for finding the largest or smallest
value in a set.
Graph - A standard graph. The links are all bidirectional
DiGraph - A directed graph. The links are uni-directional.
BTree - Good for fast lookups. Not quite as fast as heaps, but
more deterministic (not yet implemented)
Containers come in three flavors:
Fixed - Implemented using a fixed size array. These containers
are guaranteed to not allocate any dynamic store for their
operations.
Expandable - Implemented using a pointer to an array that will
be reallocated as necessary.
Dynamic - Each node in the container is dynamically allocated.
All containers come in all flavors, except a few do not have dynamic
flavors because it doesn't make sense. Actually, some other
combinations don't seem to make much sense, but someone might use them
so they are provided.
All containers come in versions that use the default storage
management or allow the user to specify the storage management.
The containers are quite functional, each has a rich set of functions.
Tests and example programs are provided as well as some reasonable
documentation.
Semaphores
----------
The ASL contains several semaphore objects implemented using protected types:
Binary - A standard binary semaphore
Counting - A standard counting semaphore
Nested - A binary semaphore, but the same task can claim it
multiple times. It must be released the same number of times
(by that task) to release the semaphore.
Nested_Prio - A nested semaphore, but it does priority
inheritance. This doesn't really work yet because setting
dynamic priorities in Ada doesn't work immediately. If anyone
has an idea how to make it work, I'd like to know.
Leak Detection Storage Manager
------------------------------
A storage manager that tracks all the allocated data and lets the user
iterate over it. Useful for finding memory leaks. It has found a few
for me :-).
Changelog for this release
--------------------------
Release 0.6a - 08/22/1998
* 08/22/1998 - Created scripts and makefiles to make a krunch-ed
version of the packages. Unfortunately, they were not clean for
direct krunching by gnatchop, I had to make a gnat.adc file to
translate filenames.
* 08/22/1998 - Baseclass.Limited_Object didn't derive from
Limited controlled, that was corrected.
Release 0.7 - 08/27/1998
* 08/23/1998 - Moved the set operations from Asgc to Asgc.Setops,
since they didn't really belong in Asgc directly.
* 08/23/1998 - Added a bunch of semaphores.
* 08/25/1998 - Created a set of managed containers, ones that have a storage
pool specified for them. These exactly mimick the regular containers
except that they have "_Managed" appended to their name.
* 08/25/1998 - Modified the sed scripts to split out the functionality, so
that, for instance, instead of using dynamic-digraph.sed you would use
the dynamic.sed hen the digraph.sed.
* 08/25/1998 - Created a special storage pool for detecting memory leaks.
* 08/26/1998 - Added a new Add operation that adds a value to a container
using an iterator. The item is added to the iterator's container and the
iterator is positioned on the new item.
* 08/26/1998 - Added two Add_Link routines to the graph container to add
links between iterators and values.
* 08/26/1998 - Worked on tests for graphs, they are updated.
* 08/26/1998 - Fixed some leaks in the graph packages.
* 08/27/1998 - Finished up the most of the updates to the tests. Just a few
more small things to do.
* 08/27/1998 - Fixed some bugs the new tests found in the ordered packages.
* 08/27/1998 - Modified the quicksort to speed it up some and to elminate
anything but swaps to move data. This avoids calls to the callbacks
since we are not really adding or removing data elements.
* 08/27/1998 - Added some routines to find links between iterators and
contained types.
* 08/27/1998 - Finished up the tests and made the makefile run them all
automatically.
--
Corey Minyard Internet: [log in to unmask]
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